A rape victim just waived anonymity after her attacker got early release from prison
Carly Royd has just waived her anonymity. She wants people to know her rapist has been granted temporary release from prison. He's only served three years of a nine-year sentence.
She lives in Leyland, Lancashire. She says she feels sick.
The man is Matthew Nicholson. He's 36, from Ingol.
So what did he do?
He raped Carly at her home in Leyland in December 2021. Her daughter was asleep in the next room. She was 13 at the time.
Nicholson denied it. A jury found him guilty anyway.
A judge at Preston Crown Court jailed him for nine years on 15 September 2023. That's six years in custody and three years on extended licence.
He was ordered to sign the Sex Offenders Register for life. He also got a 12-year restraining order.
And he was told he must serve two-thirds of his sentence before he's even eligible for parole. That date was September 2027.
But here's the thing. Nicholson has now been granted Release on Temporary Licence. RTL, for short.
The Lancashire Post broke this story. They say he'll be free to leave prison this month. Supervised at first, then unsupervised.
So why does this matter so much?
Because rape convicts are supposed to be excluded from early release.
The government brought in an early-release scheme to ease prison overcrowding. People convicted of manslaughter, rape, serious child sex offences or grooming are meant to be exempt from it. In principle.
But RTL is different. It's a longstanding, separate mechanism. It lets risk-assessed prisoners out on temporary licence before their actual parole date.
And right now, it's not clear how a convicted rapist qualified for it.
Sir Lindsay Hoyle is the Speaker of the House of Commons and the MP for Chorley. He has written to the Minister for Prisons and Probation about this release.
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